When it comes to Artificial Intelligence, people watch the wrong movie. They fixate on “The Terminator,” but the real risk is seen in Disney’s “Fantasia.”
In Terminator, an all-powerful, faultless AI becomes sentient, decides that humans are the enemy, and sets off a nuclear apocalypse. In Fantasia’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” Mickey Mouse puts a spell on a broom to make it do his work. The broom goes rogue, continually pouring buckets of water into an overflowing well. When Mickey smashes the broom, each piece becomes a new water-fetching runaway robot. He almost drowns before the sorcerer stops the catastrophe.
